


May God watch over me (but not see what I do)

by giurochedadomani



Series: Born for greatness [2]
Category: Trust (TV 2018)
Genre: And Dante full on freaking out, Angst, As he bleeds out in the back of a car, But not doing quite bad himself, Features in no particular order, Feelings (Ugh), Happy Ending, Leonardo not commanding the fear in men’s hearts as Primo does with a glare, M/M, Mob Wars, Primo behaving like a cat wanting to be pet, This is a story about Leonardo’s horrible honest to God no good day, alternating pov, because Primo might actually die and if he doesn’t he might kill him for real this time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 05:02:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28754820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giurochedadomani/pseuds/giurochedadomani
Summary: Seconds extend themselves.Primo’s head lols to the side, eyes closed.Leonardo’s heart pounds very, very loudly.“...Primo?”…“Primo!”—The First ‘Ndrangheta war raged from 1974 to 1976 and resulted in approximately 233 deaths.This is the story of one of them.
Relationships: Leonardo/Primo Nizzuto
Series: Born for greatness [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2119017
Comments: 10
Kudos: 53





	May God watch over me (but not see what I do)

The First ‘Ndrangheta war raged from 1974 to 1976 and resulted in approximately 233 deaths. 

It facilitated the rise of a new generation of ‘Ndranghetisti, who wanted to involve the organization in new, more lucrative criminal activities, like kidnapping or drug trafficking. 

* * *

[ _Gioia Tauro, half past three in the morning of the 20th of August_ ] 

_There’s too much blood._

“Come here”. 

“No”. 

“ _P_ _rimo_ ”. 

“ _No_ — Ugh”, he adds, when Leonardo tugs him near anyway. There’s just so much so that one can do when faced with a man pushing in his early thirties that decides to behave like an unruly child. “I’ll ruin your suit”. 

“I don’t care about the stupid suit”, Leonardo snaps, and automatically relents when Primo looks as if he has just slapped him. He throws a sideways glance to Dante, driving and pointedly _not_ looking, and sighs, focusing solely in Primo. _Let's solve problem by problem_. “You can buy me another. _You need to lie down_ ”.

There’s a dark stain getting increasingly bigger on Primo’s jeans moment by moment. The upholstery, in nude leather, is splashed with red. Primo tenses up as he lies down on Leonardo’s lap. He tries hard not to let a sound on when he accommodates the leg he has been shot in, but doesn’t quite manage it. Leonardo attempts to breathe instead of thinking in Primo, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old Primo, also trying to keep stoically silent as Leonardo patched him up after a row with his father. 

He shakes Primo’s shoulder.

“Hey, no sleeping”. 

Primo throws him an annoyed look over his shoulder, tries to shakes Leonardo’s hand off— 

“ _Not sleeping_ ”, he mumbles. 

—But Leonardo doesn’t entirely let him go. He touches Primo’s cold, clammy skin, feels how he trembles. He starts trying to rub some feeling back into Primo’s arm. 

“You’re freezing”. His heart is sinking. “God, you’re fucking freezing”. 

“Not so comfortable yourself”, comes the haughty reply as a mutter, nonsensical, as Primo burrows himself closer to Leonardo. “ _Nnn—_ don’t move”, he complains, as Leonardo takes off his jacket and puts it over him, and continues trying to rub some feeling back into Primo.

They need a doctor and they need it _now_. 

“Go directly to Gambino’s office”, he instructs Dante. 

“But Primo said—”. 

“Go _directly_ to Gambino’s office”, he repeats, slowly, interrupting him. Then, softer: “I’ll deal with him”. 

Dante nods. 

“I’m right here”, Primo grumbles. Leonardo sets aside a strand of his hair, and Primo tilts his head to follow the movement, content. Leonardo continues doing so, starting to pass his hand through Primo’s mane. 

“I’ll deal with you”, Leonardo repeats to him, as if it made any sense, snorting despite himself when Primo smiles a little in response to that, clearly happy to have Leonardo’s attention entirely back on him regardless of whatever the hell Leonardo’s saying. 

Primo blinks, and then again, a little longer. Leonardo reaches for the nearest thought to keep him talking: “Something posh”. 

“Mm?” 

“You can buy me something posh, next time. Something…”, he trails off, searching for the right word and settles for: “ _Cool_ ”, because he knows it’ll make Primo laugh. Primo snorts _._ “Something I can wear to the Scala, when we go”. 

“You don’t do posh. Or _cool_ ”. A cloud passes through Primo’s face. He adds, in what on every other occasion would have been deliberately casual, but now just sounds small: “You don’t want to go to the Scala”. 

A recurrent argument. Leonardo likes the idea, what he doesn’t like is the price tag. He can’t help feeling horrible at the idea of burning in a couple of days through the money he’d win before in a year. Leave it to Primo and his insidious defensiveness to take it as definitive proof that Leonardo doesn’t like him. 

“Don’t be stupid”, he scolds, gently. “Of course I want to go. Who wouldn’t?” Primo’s silence gives him pause. He squeezes Primo’s shoulder lightly, decides to try again with a little tease: “I mean, watching you gush about Corelli or that, that German tenor. What was his name?” 

Seconds extend themselves. 

Primo’s head lols to the side, eyes closed. 

Leonardo’s heart pounds very, very loudly. 

“...Primo?” 

… 

“ _Primo!_ ” 

* * *

[ _Gioia Tauro, half past three in the afternoon of the night of the 19th to the 20th of August_ ] 

He could do it. 

He could take a rope, wrap it around his neck and squeeze until he heard it crack. He could sit the body in his fancy car and leave it there after pumping up the gas, making it look as if he had asphyxiated on his own. 

He could bash his face in, put him in the truck of his fancy car and shoot him once he moved him to the outskirts, making it seem like a robbery gone wrong. 

He could beat him to a pulp and then burn the body. Hell, he’s pretty sure he could run him over with his car and the guards of the parking lot wouldn’t move a muscle to prevent it. He sure as hell pays them enough not to do it. 

Rocco Fiore doesn’t do any of those things. 

He stares at Leonardo Gentile’s face and lets out a disbelieving laugh. 

“You want me to do your dirty work”, he sums up, slowly. “Starting by, murdering Lorenzo Romano”. 

“Yes”. 

Rocco stares some more. 

“Incudine’s Lorenzo Romano”, he insists. “Biggest fortune in Calabria Lorenzo Romano”. Gentile snorts. “ _Knows people in the Quirinale Lorenzo Romano_ ”. 

“I’m glad to see that you get the gist, yes”. 

“He’s got a fucking pretorian guard protecting him!”, Rocco explodes. _He should do it_. If he had known that the meeting would be such a waste of time, he’d have already done it. 

Gentile doesn’t battle an eyelid at his outburst. He seems altogether rather unimpressed.

Rocco hates how unsettled it makes him feel. 

“We’re confident in your skills”. _It's not a matter of skills._ Rocco scoffs. “And as I told you, you’ll be compensated for your efforts. Handsomely”.

“My fucking body would be the one compensated”. There’s people you mess with, there’s people you don’t mess with and then there’s Lorenzo Romano. All the money in the world wouldn’t make a good business out of that. _But if Nizzuto does manage to—_ No. He’s _not_ considering the deal. “Tell Nizzuto he can shove his offer where the sun doesn’t shine on. See if he likes it better”.

“You want to speak with me and not directly with Primo, trust me”, recommends Gentile with the kind of finality that suggests how sporadically that specific advice is listened to. 

Rocco observes Gentile’s unnerving calmed expression. 

“I could kill you right now, you know. Serve Romano your head on a plate”. He can play his cards correctly, stay in the clearly winning team. _But if Nizzuto— No._

“You can try”. Gentiles looks him up and down, as if he’s measuring him up. His mouth twitches up on a little, amused smile that says _try me_ in everything but words. “But that won’t change the fact that Romano’s a dead man standing, whether he likes it or not, and that the port is ours, whether you all like it or not. What we’re offering you is the possibility of jumping out of a sinking ship”. 

The fact that the new fish in the bay had decided to go after the fucking shark would be hilarious to him if Gentile wasn’t trying to put him in the middle of the hunt. 

“You’re nuts. You and Nizzuto. Either that or you’re dumb as a brick. I don’t know which one is sadder”. Better to play it safe than sorry. He’s not doing it. _Definitely. Not without making sure—_ “And if I decide to wait? Until I see whose ship does sink?” 

Gentile looks, and looks, and looks, and it has been a long time since Rocco had been looked at with anything but fear and respect. He has worked hard to ensure that.

Finally, Gentile gives a little shrug. 

“It has been a pleasure meeting you”. He bows his head a little, starts walking. Rocco stares in disbilief that turns into cold sweat as Gentile says over his shoulder. “I’ll make sure to mention it. Always a smile on his face, _signore_ Fiore. What a loss for the community”. 

Rocco sees him make his way out of the parking lot, how he waves goodbye politely to his guards, as uneasiness settles into his stomach.

* * *

[ _Gioia Tauro, early morning of the 20th of August_ ]

Leonardo has kissed his way down Primo’s body more times that he cares to count. 

He knows where Primo has his scars. The ones he talks about, and the ones he doesn’t. 

There’s a burn on his collarbone. Marks over his left ear, hidden by his hair, from which Leonardo remembers picking up tiny crystal shreds among his bloodied mane. The rest of a deep cut at the right side of his ribs, strikingly white against his bronzed skin (Primo tenses up every time that he touches it). 

“You’re a pain in the ass, you know that, don’t you?”, he says to Primo, once they move him to his house. Primo’s unconscious figure looks cadaveric on his bed. “Always got to have your way, and damn the consequences. Damn who sticks around to clean up your mess”, he wants to shout. He wants to shake him. He wants to tell him how much of an idiot he is. 

Above all what he wants is to see him wake up. 

“You had no right”, he spits, and his throat burns. 

There’s one scar on Primo’s temple, from back when he tried to run away the first time. Leonardo can almost see him again if he closes his eyes, sprawled in a chair in Salvatore’s kitchen, impossibly young and even more impossibly proud, an icy glare on his eyes that announced that he’d claw anyone who dared to say a thing about his puffy, purple cheek. 

Leonardo’s hand hovers above it, but he doesn’t touch it. 

“And you won’t even let me tell you…”

He sighs, and drops his hand. 

Leonardo waits until dawn before phoning Regina, though he doubts that she had managed to sleep at all. They agree not to say a word to Francesco, which means, obviously, that Leonardo finds him in Primo’s room before noon. 

“This is a thing that can happen”, he tells him. Primo’s chest rises and falls, rises and falls. “Someone may commit a mistake. A discussion might get out of hand. There’s always a possibility to end up here. You’ve got to accept it, if you follow down this path”. 

“Will he wake up?”, Francesco asks in a tense whisper, brazing himself. 

Leonardo opens his mouth and— He thinks of how Francesco grabs his cigarettes in a way that screams ‘Primo’. The way in which he won’t stop asking for a car. Leonardo thinks about late afternoons of them both teaming up to tease him that turn into late nights of Francesco listening with naked fascination the latest tale Primo wants to recount about his life in Rome, always way too beautiful to be entirely true. 

“Of course he will, don’t be stupid”. 

“ _Soft, soft, soft_ ”, says the devil on his shoulder. 

It sounds suspiciously like Primo. 

* * *

[ _Gioia Tauro, almost three in the morning of the night of the 19th to the 20th of August_ ] 

Dante can read the signs as his grandad used to read the weather, standing over his harvest and looking at the horizon with a gloomy face as dark clouds approached. Primo’s constant smoking. How he can’t stop moving a knee. That specific type of tension that settles on Primo’s shoulders, the one which, in every other occasion, would send Dante running for his life. 

“What’s wrong with you, now?”

But he can’t do that right now. 

“You don’t want to go?”, Leonardo insists, sitting shotgun in the car next to Primo as Dante observes from the backseat. A beat of silence. “Do we expect problems?” 

Dante hasn’t got the faintest inkling what change Leonardo sees in Primo’s posture, but he seems to guess correctly when he says: “Romano won’t come”. 

They still don’t get out of the car. 

Dante can more or less guess persons up the road, silhouetted against the illumination of the construction site they’re supposed to be heading by now. 

“And if he does, then what?”

They’ll kill him, probably. Or they would attempt to negotiate. Dante lost track of where the conversation led to when it became clear that Leonardo and Primo hadn’t yet made up their minds about it. 

“You’re assuming that he knows. He’d have acted by now”. 

“I wouldn’t”. Primo’s mouth quirks up. Dante’s very glad that he’s not directing it at him. “I’d have waited for him to get comfortable enough. Then find his weakness and strike where it’d hurt more”. 

Then he seems to process what he’s saying, and sets his jaw, and adds nothing, in Primo’s usual cryptical fashion. What is way weirder is how Leonardo looks so disappointed, and maybe a little sad. 

“It’s not a weakness unless you make it into one”. Another beat of silence. “You don’t think that I can hold my own?” 

Dante looks at one, then at the other. He feels as if he’s missing something important. Which is worrying, because if there’s something that Primo doesn’t like is having to explain himself twice. 

Leonardo sighs. 

“Do you want to call the whole thing off?” 

Dante sees Primo look through the window, up the road, then to his side, where his men are waiting in another couple of cars. _What does he expect? A shooting?_ Dante tries to follow Primo’s line of sight through the window at the back. _Like, for real? An actual shooting?_

“That wouldn’t look nice either”. 

Dante hasn’t ever been in a shooting. He’s not quite sure he wants to change that. But if they can’t back off from the meeting without losing face, Primo’s choice is patently obvious. “That leaves only an option, no?”, Dante still asks. 

Both Leonardo and Primo turn to him as if they had forgotten that he was there. Dante tries to remember that Primo can’t actually read his thoughts as he fixes him with one of his unnerving stares. He’s about to apologize for interrupting them when Primo says: “You. You stay here. Keep the engine on”. Then Primo turns to Leonardo before opening the door or the car and adds: “If things go south, we get the hell out. We’ll regroup at my house. Tell the rest”. 

* * *

_Time slows down and flows faster, as if Primo’s in the middle of a high. He hears people’s shouts and at the same time he’s only able to hear the pounding of his heart._

_He sees Romano getting close and thinks_ **_no_** _. He sees the glint of his gun and thinks_ **_fuck you._ ** _He sees him aim and thinks_ **_don’t you dare_** _._

**_You don’t get to touch my things._ **

_He grabs Leonardo to the side._

_Romano shoots._

* * *

[ _Gioia Tauro, night of the 20th to the 21th of August_ ]

[ _Finally_ ]

Leonardo finds Primo sitting against his bed’s frame when he comes back to his house, (looking like a king on his throne, propped up against pillows as he smokes), and it’s as if the world starts turning again on its axis. 

“I’m not sure Gambino would approve”, Leonardo comments, pointing with a vague gesture to the cigarette. 

Primo takes a drag, exhales and declares a: “Suck my dick”, that sounds _so_ petulant. It makes Leonardo feel lighter than a feather.

He turns to close the door behind him to hide a smile that’s anyway apparent in his voice when he says: “That I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t”. 

Primo snorts, and looks at him curiously as he sits down, letting himself fall in a chair by the bedside with a very tired ‘oomf’. Uncharacteristically of him but not unsurprisingly, Primo doesn’t start dragging him about his age. He jumps straight to ask him: “And so?” 

Get Primo a doctor, pay the Police off, threaten Rocco Fiore. _Let’s solve problem by problem._

“It’s done”. 

“Fiore, will he help us?” 

Leonardo thinks of him staring into Fiore’s soul, while a dark voice at the back of his brain demanded the idiot to _please, just give me an excuse._

He nods, slowly. 

He sees Primo frowning a little out of the corner of his eye. 

“How did it go down?” 

_Well, today we’ve gotten ourselves in the middle of a war. I had to tell the wives of two of your men that their husbands weren’t coming home. God knows how many times I’m going to have to do it again in the upcoming weeks._

_I was shot at._

_You almost died._

_You know, an average Wednesday._

“Can we do this other time?”, he asks, feeling his throat parched. “Any other time”. 

Primo frowns deeper. Leonardo can practically hear his internal debate, the gears in his brain turning as he tries to figure out his deal. It’s a testament to how much Primo trusts him that he changes gears without asking why. 

“Why does Dante think that I’m killing him for real, this time?”, he asks, taking a puff. He looks completely unbothered by it. 

Leonardo doesn’t know when Dante has seen Primo awake or where he is right in that moment, but he can easily imagine Primo staring at Dante from his bed, unnerving, like a tiger toying with his food, as the poor guy squirmed. He’d remind Primo that he’s way too old to behave like such a school bully but he can’t help but think of— 

(“Are you out of your mind? What if someone sees?”, shouts Gambino when he finally opens the door. “This was not part of the plan!” 

Primo is like a heavy puppet with its strings cut. Leonardo has trouble keeping him upright with Dante. 

“This was not planned, _trust me_ ”, says Leonardo, pushing in)

“Francesco came by, before”, Primo tries again when Leonardo doesn’t answer. “He looked sick, I’m telling you. The kid doesn’t have a doctor in him. It’s a pity, but then again there are other options...”

He does offer Leonardo a little smile as he trails off, unsure, as if he’s testing the waters between them, before it freezes over and disappears. Leonardo sees him getting more tense with each passing moment, taking a drag so he has something to do instead of speaking and he tries to breath instead of thinking of Primo, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old Primo, who made a custom of brazing himself to take the blame for things he couldn’t possibly have had any responsibility in after a lifetime with his father first and Salvatore later. 

_I’m not angry with you_ , he’d said, if Primo was any likely to listen. _I’m angry at your self destructive tendencies. At your impulsiveness. At the fact that you would cut your tongue out before admitting out loud that you love me, but you don’t have any problem getting shot at my place._

Primo drops the act when he still doesn’t reply.

“If you tell me that I shouldn’t have done it, or some shit like that, I’m kicking you out”, he declares, defensively. 

Leonardo sighs. 

“Francesco was... worried”. Leonardo tries to swallow past the knot in his throat as he searches for a way to explain it that Primo can understand. “It was bad”. Which is a complete waste of effort, because he can feel his eyes stinging, his vision clouding, and he’s not going to be able to get through it if the only thing he can think about it’s Primo lying in a pool of blood at the back of the car. “It was a close call”, he manages, and then he’s hiding his face in his hands, elbows on his knees, and he’s crying. _Perfect. Just. Fucking perfect._

_You almost died. What the fuck would I have done?_

He hears Primo sigh. He hears him shuffling a little, very carefully, and at first he thinks Primo’s just lighting out the cigarette, but then he feels him getting close enough so he can squeeze his shoulder, in what Leonardo is forced to interpret as his attempt to comfort him. It’s so painfully awkward that he almost wants to laugh.

“Come here”. Another squeeze when he hesitates, then a tad exasperated: “ _Come_ ”. 

Leonardo lets himself be pulled to the bed. He lies next to Primo, barely daring to breath as Primo burrows closer to him. He looks uncertain for a moment, but ends up picking up Leonardo’s hand. He starts tracing patterns with his fingers on Leonardo’s forearm. 

Leonardo looks, and looks and looks until Primo seems to make up his mind and points out, deliberate, slow: “...I did it, I’ve done it and I’ll do it again in a heartbeat”. 

  
(“So you better get inside that thick skull of yours how much I—”)

  
Leonardo’s heart misses a beat before it seems to remember how to do it, and then beats twice as fast to make up for it. He tries his damnest not to sob. Knowing Primo, he also tries not to give in and pull him in a hug. 

“You trust me, don’t you?”, Primo asks, trying to project confidence in what he says, but not quite achieving it. _You trust me_ , he has the gulls to ask. God damn him. Leonardo nods. “I’m okay”, Primo points out, a little smile on his lips, as if that was enough to make everything right. 

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? It’s enough. They’ve pulled through the day. They’re still together. 

After a moment of hesitation, Leonardo draps very loosely an arm over Primo’s waist as if it were a barricade against all harm.

**Author's Note:**

> [This is my tumblr](https://giurochedadomani.tumblr.com/), come say hi!


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